Nathan Ashby and Fernanda García Named as Professors in Western Hemispheric Trade Research

March 4, 2010

The Western Hemispheric Trade professorships are awarded to junior faculty who successfully conduct research that contributes to our understanding of business and economic conditions in the Western Hemisphere. The award will be held for a period of two years and income from the professorship’s endowment can be employed to support the holder’s research and/or research-related travel.

Nathan J. Ashby is an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Texas at El Paso. He earned his B.A. in economics at Utah State University and his M.A. and Ph.D. at West Virginia University. His research interests include the impact of institutions on migration and development. He has published articles in the Southern Economic Journal, Public Choice, and the Eastern Economic Journal.

He is currently the lead author of the Economic Freedom of North America 2010 Annual Report published by the Fraser Institute. This report will update the economic freedom data for U.S. states and Canadian provinces and attempts to tie in the Mexican states to the index. Using the data for the Mexican states, he will be analyzing the relationship between economic freedom, remittances, and development in Mexico.

"Most of my research has analyzed the impact of economic freedom institutions on migration and development within the United States and throughout the world," said Ashby.

"Understanding which institutions matter and how to help countries to adopt these institutions is necessary in order for many countries to progress as globalization continues."

María Fernanda García is an assistant professor in the Department of Marketing and Management at the University of Texas at El Paso. Her current research interests include diversity issues at work and international human resource management. Her work appears in journals such as Personnel Psychology, Journal of Organizational Behavior, Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, Applied Psychology: An International Review, International Journal of Selection and Assessment, and The International Journal of Human Resource Management. She is an ad-hoc reviewer for various journals including the Academy of Management Journal and Applied Psychology: An International Review. She is a member of the Academy of Management, the Iberoamerican Academy of Management, the American Psychological Association, and the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology.

With the support of this professorship, García is conducting research on diversity issues with a focus on Latin America in general and Mexico in particular.

"I have been working in the field of human resources, and within this field I have been developing two main areas of research: diversity issues at work and international human resource management. An important stream of my research deals with international human resources in particular in the context of northern Mexico, El Paso's immediate neighbor and intimate economic partner," said García.